What Newt’s Reading | January 23, 2021

What Newt’s Reading It’s revealing that Speaker Nancy’s Pelosi’s first legislative priority is to impose California-style election rules nationwide with no concern for ballot integrity. -Newt Pelosi’s Top Priority: Consolidating Power By The Editorial Board Wall Street Journal House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has made consolidating a permanent Democratic majority a top priority in this Congress. House Democrats have reintroduced HR 1, a bill that would result in a federal takeover of our elections with new rules that would favor the Democrats. The bill requires all states to automatically register voters on federal and state databases and limits the ability of states to expunge voters from their rolls. The bill would also strip state legislatures’ abilities to draw congressional districts and would require the disclosure of the names of political donors, allowing them to be harassed publicly. Perhaps most significantly, Democrats also introduced a bill that would confer statehood on Washington, DC and Puerto Rico, cementing a potentially permanent Democratic majority in the Senate. President Joe Biden has already endorsed many of the principles in this bill and the legislative filibuster is the only roadblock in its path to passage. The inconsistency of Big Tech’s censorship is not the issue. Instead, the issue is censorship itself. The First Amendment rights of free speech are threatened when Big Tech can choose who gets to speak on public forums and what they can say. -Newt Why Is Twitter Censoring Trump, but Not the CCP? By Paddy Hannam Spiked Online Recently, President Trump was thrown off social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter while no action was taken against a tweet from the Chinese embassy in the US portraying the ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs by the Chinese government as a humanitarian exercise. The double standard shows that social media companies view President Trump as more worthy of punishment than a genocidal government. While the inconsistency is troubling, criticism on these grounds misses the point. Online censorship is a major threat to freedom of expression by itself. It is best to leave the propaganda up so that people can find out about China’s evil deeds rather than purging it from the online public sphere. As President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra works closely with nonprofits — and already has a history of disliking them. -Newt Xavier Becerra’s Nonprofit Problem By James Piereson and Naomi Schaefer Riley Wall Street Journal Given that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) deals extensively with nonprofits, it is troubling that President Joe Biden’s pick for HHS secretary, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, has a history of disliking them. He has previously expressed objections to charitable institutions that did not distribute funds “equitably,” alleging that their funding recipients included disproportionately low numbers of people of color. He may be motivated to use his power to take punitive action against charitable institutions that do not equitably distribute their funds in his eyes, despite the fact that current IRS regulations include no such requirement for those institutions. In 2019, Becerra also advocated against President Trump’s efforts to exempt religious institutions from federal rules barring discrimination on the basis of sexual preference. He refused to acknowledge the good work done by these organizations, including placing children in foster care, only emphasizing the alleged harm such actions do to the LGBTQ community. High-level editors at the New York Post instructed staff members this week not to use reporting from CNN, MSNBC, the Times, and the Washington Post as the sole basis for any Post article. -Newt New York Post Banning CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, and New York Times as Primary Sources: Report By Carly Roman Washington Examiner According to anonymous reports from three journalists, high-level editors instructed staff members at the New York Post not to use reporting from CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post as the sole basis for any Post article. While no official reason was announced for this change, New York Times media reporter Katie Robertson hypothesized that the perceived liberal bias of those outlets and publishing their work did not fit the Post’s right-leaning identity. Founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801, the Post gained widespread attention shortly before the 2020 election when it published an explosive story regarding Hunter Biden’s foreign ties. As a result, Twitter and Facebook blocked the story from being shared and locked the Post out of its social media accounts. Newt will host a virtual live event at 11 a.m. ET on Jan. 26. JOIN TODAY to be a part of this special event and receive a BONUS GIFT. Click here to join Newt’s Inner Circle. Newt's Latest Podcasts: On Sale Now: